Melbourne’s Final Legal Same Sex Wedding

Love. It can be that ray of sunshine that breaks through the darkest of clouds, and indeed the darkest of clouds have hung overhead for most of 2020. For newlyweds Emily Sinclair and Jessica King, it may have not been the ceremony they had envisaged. Yet in the midst of the ongoing pandemic, they tied the knot, proving just how bright their shared love truly is.

“We actually met online”, Emily tells us. “I was still in New South Wales, and I was planning to come down and do postgraduate studies, but I didn’t know anyone and wanted to make some friends, but ended up falling in love with Jess. She came up for my graduation, and then we drove back to Melbourne together.”

It was a cold, grey, winter’s day – the type which Melbourne is famous for. It was a Wednesday, and two days earlier than Jess and Emily had originally planned their ceremony. Had they waited just one day longer, the ceremony would not have been legal. The reality of Melbourne’s current stage 4 restrictions is that weddings are banned for at least the next six weeks.

“We had a timeline for how everything was meant to go that week, but it turned into pulling a few all-nighters to make it happen for Wednesday,” Emily says. “It was definitely surreal, and a little stressful. We weren’t allowed a photographer, and we were only allowed two witnesses. We had to set everything up ourselves and then it was only a five minute ceremony.”

 The traditional veil was replaced by a bejewelled face mask, and the traditional wedding party was replaced by passers-by as they went about their one hour of daily exercise at Coburg Lake in Melbourne’s northern suburbs.

“I guess for me the ceremony was perfect,” said Jess. “Everything went off without a hitch. There was no rain, no interruptions and as upsetting as it was not to have all the people we wanted there, I was kind of glad that we could only have two people. I have really bad anxiety, and I was feeling a little anxious about having a big ceremony and a big party. Originally there was the five person wedding rule, and then it opened up to 10 people. When this happened, our celebrant asked if we would like anyone else there, so Emily had planned to have two bridesmaids coming from Newcastle, and her Dad was also meant to come down from Sydney. It was a realbummer how the borders ended up closing and the restrictions were put back in place. We ended up doing it via Zoom, and I was stilllucky enough for my maid of honour to do a reading.”

Having become engaged last year, the couple originally planned on having their wedding in June at a bar in Collingwood, and for a time considered delaying the ceremony. However, in March, Emily spent three days in hospital with pneumonia, and at the time the medical staff were rightly concerned that it may have been COVID–19, with fears that she may have lost her life.

“We just wanted to get married while we still could and not have that opportunity taken away from us”, says Emily.

As the brides exchanged their vows and removed their face masks for the traditional kiss, the sun broke through those dark clouds overhead for a brief moment. So what would their honeymoon in lockdown look like?

With a bit of a laugh, Emily pipes up; “Look we’ve been stuck in lockdown for a while. Unfortunately it’s not the best of circumstances, but I’m sure we will find a way to make the most of it.”